


Salt, Water, Copper

by dharmaavocado



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, fairytale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 06:47:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17279081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dharmaavocado/pseuds/dharmaavocado
Summary: This is what we must remember: all oceans are the same ocean.  They are much older than we suspect they are, and they have a long memory, longer than the creatures that live within and without, longer than civilizations that rise and crumble and rise again, longer than us, so long that it is not a linear line but a curve that arcs back onto itself.  But know this: it not so long as the memory span of stars and dust and the vast empty blackness of space.(In which there is a story, the ocean, and a remembrance)





	Salt, Water, Copper

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this [post](http://shadowmaat.tumblr.com/post/181572139699/bluemaskedkarma-cyancrown-go-to-beach-and) and these tags by Shadowmaat: "my brain tried to turn the first one into a Moana thing#with The Ocean favoring Obi-Wan #as in ALL oceans#as in imagine Kamino #and The Ocean chooses Obi-Wan to save the clones #almost nothing at all like Moana #but still"
> 
> This is no way like Moana, but it does, indeed, feature the ocean.

Oh, hello, my dear. Are you here for a story? Which one shall it be? Perhaps something where the heroes are stalwart and true, where the wrongdoers never win and are always punished, and no one ever dies, and everyone lives happ—no? You want this one? Are you certain? You must be certain because once we start we must see it through to its end. Very well. Let us begin.

There is a world. It is not unlike our own. It does not matter where this planet is, if it’s in the core or along the Outer Rim. What matters is that on this world that is, in many ways, like ours, there is a beach. This beach has, mostly, the same things ours does: sand, shells, scuttling creatures, both small and not small. The ocean.

But this beach has something ours does not. It has a boy. This boy has copper red hair, which is unusual for his people, and brown skin, which is not. He is a strange boy, although no stranger than most. He stands at the shoreline and watches the water. Perhaps he is looking for the dolphins his parents have told him swim along the horizon. Perhaps he is watching the movement of the waves. Perhaps he is thinking about the men in great robes who came to his house three days past and said he was meant for something greater than this. Or perhaps he just likes how the light looks upon the water.

It does not, in the end, matter. What matters is this: his hair is the same copper red as his mother’s hair and his skin is the same warm brown as his father’s skin, and when the waves cradle him gently, so gently, and lifts him up, up, up, this boy, with his strange and thoughtful eyes who shoved an older child without ever touching her, will laugh.

This boy—what was that? Yes, it’s Obi-Wan Kenobi. Of course it is. You’re very clever for working that out. Now, please, don’t interrupt.

His parents name him Obi-Wan. They do not know what a heavy name it will become to carry, later. Perhaps it holds some significance for them, an old family name, like how ours is old. Or perhaps they heard it somewhere and like the way it sounds. Obi-Wan.

It doesn’t matter, not really. They name him Obi-Wan, but his father calls him Obi as he tickles the soles of his feet and kisses the tips of his fingers. Obi, kid, come on, his mother says as she walks countless circuits around the room to calm him enough so they can both sleep. Obi, with his mother’s copper red hair and his father’s warm brown skin. Obi, who is chosen by the ocean.

This is what we must remember: all oceans are the same ocean. Yes, the ocean outside is the same as the one Obi-Wan watches. Our ocean, all the oceans, are much older than we suspect they are, and they have a long memory, longer than the creatures that live within and without, longer than civilizations that rise and crumble and rise again, longer than us, so long that it is not a linear line but a curve that arcs back onto itself. But know this: it not so long as the memory span of stars and dust and the vast empty blackness of space.

It remembers, and because it does so, it has chosen Obi-Wan.

You need to understand that it need not be him. It could have been his sister, perhaps, born after he was taken away and who he will never know. Or a Nautolan, who swims slower than his brethren but has learned to hide amongst the coral, safe. Or a Mon Calamari, who likes the depths and the pressure and the strange beauty of the things found there. Or perhaps it could have been a Kel Dor girl, who stands at the mouth of the deep cavern, letting the cool, dark water lap at her feet as the tide washes in.

It could have been anyone. Even me. Even you.

But it’s not us. It is Obi-Wan. Perhaps he was chosen because the ocean liked how his copper red hair shone in the sun or how the dried salt looked upon his brown skin. Or maybe it liked how thoughtfully he watched the waves and the water, too curious to be afraid as he was snatched from the land and born aloft. Or, possibly, it remembers there will come a day when Obi-Wan will stand upon a rain slick platform, saltwater streaming from his copper hair and along his brown skin, and he will do what the ocean cannot.

This is speculation, of course. We must not make the mistake of thinking of the ocean in human terms. It is what it is and we are what we are, and we will never understand each other, not truly.

This doesn’t change the story. I merely mention it so you do not judge what happens next too harshly.

And that is this: the ocean lets Obi-Wan be taken. He will forget nearly everything, his mother’s copper red hair and his father’s warm brown skin, the way he laughed as the ocean lifted him high. This will make his life more difficult. The ocean knows this. It remembers this. But nonetheless it lets him be taken.

Obi-Wan is to be a Jedi, and so in the way of the Jedi he is brought to their temple where he is raised to be mindful and true and wise and never angry. It may seem to us those are unobtainable ideals that generations of Jedi will break themselves against, but that is only because it is not our way, and our way is not theirs. Remember, we are what we are. No more and no less.

I can you see wondering if Obi-Wan can be happy on a planet where there are no oceans. Perhaps he is. Was. That is not for me to say.

But know this: the oceans of Coruscant were drained and the miles upon miles of the great city built atop their dry sea beds. But do you remember what I said about the oceans? That remains true. All oceans are the same ocean, even the ghost of an ocean is the ocean, and the temple of the Jedi sits atop what was once the greatest ocean on all of Coruscant. And this is where Obi-Wan trains and grows. He never really left the water, you see. He’s still in it, wherever he goes.

Now let us watch the years pass, as years are wont to do, and witness how Obi-Wan forgets, as the ocean knew he would, the copper red of his mother’s hair and the warm brown of his father’s skin and how the ocean could make him, such a serious child, laugh.

Soon he is no longer Obi, the chosen of the ocean. He is Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi padawan apprenticed to Master Qui-Gon Jinn, who does not know what to do with a boy with red hair and brown skin and thoughtful eyes and a vein of anger he has not yet learned to mine safely.

Qui-Gon watches the boy as the boy watches him, and this is what he sees: how the water in the temple’s fountains, pumped up from some deep cavern that has not yet been drained dry, will orient itself to Obi-Wan as he passes; how on a moon so new it has not yet earned a name, Obi-Wan takes off his boots and rolls up his pants legs and walk along the shoreline, humming a song he barely recalls from his early childhood, and when he is called away, Qui-Gon will see the tide come in, slowly, slowly, and then all at once, chasing the boy’s heels and taking the locals by surprise. Qui-Gon will see all this and he will wonder what his apprentice truly is.

And it is because of this that when master and apprentice are offered an assignment on the Mon Calamari home world, a diplomatic function that is well suited to a young padawan learning his art, Qui-Gon will think of the water in the fountains and the tide rushing after Obi-Wan to curl near lovingly around his ankles, and he will grow, not afraid for the boy, but concerned. Uneasy. You must know that he cares for Obi-Wan, and that is why turns the assignment down.

I can see you think he is wrong to do so. Maybe he is, and maybe he isn’t. It’s not for us to know. It is true that if he didn’t, if he allowed Obi-Wan to go to Mon Calamari and remember the ocean as it remembers him, his story might have a different ending. A happier one. Easier, at the very least.

But Qui-Gon’s story must end in the way we knew it would, with his body burning on the funeral pyre and the oceans of Naboo rising to flood the chasm of Obi-Wan’s grief.

Does this sadden you? Do you weep for this flawed man who tried to do good and only broke against an ideal he could never attain? It’s all right, if you do. That is what these stories are for, after all. We tell them to mourn for those we will never know.

But I think we have, perhaps, lingered too long. Let us, for now at least, leave Obi-Wan to his new apprentice and his old sorrows. We have intruded in his life too much as is. Better for him to grieve in private. Some things are not meant to be shared.

Let us instead turn our attention to the Outer Rim and the planet that the man who was once called Dooku took such care to wipe from the archives as he leaves the Jedi to become something new. We, of course, know how this will end for him, although he does not. You’re wondering that if he knew what we know would he would still continue on? Maybe he would or maybe he would not. He is what he is. It is not our place to judge.

But his part in this story, the one you so desperately wanted told, is over. What matters now is that planet he tried to keep hidden, the one along the Outer Rim’s most outer edge, the one so easily forgotten by all but the Jedi who was once called Sifo-Dyas.

Look, there he is now, walking through the rain towards the facility. The planet’s rainy season lasts half the year. It is considered by some to be a dreary place, but one that will soon be home to a new people, who will not be so different than those Obi-Wan has forgotten on the world he was once from.

Now Sifo-Dyas meets with the head director of the facility. He tells her what he wants. It is not an easy request, but he has money and the director and her kind are very skilled. She agrees, as the ocean knew she would. It has remembered this.

His part complete, Sifo-Dyas walks back through the rain and is gone. He will be found many years later, and what remains will no longer answer to the same name. But that, too, does not concern the ocean and so it does not concern us.

What matters now is this facility and this planet. It is Kamino, as I can you see you have correctly guessed. It is an aquatic world, much like Mon Calamari. But unlike Mon Calamari, Kamino’s sea beds are scattered with the remnants of past civilizations. In the southern water, coral reefs have grown from their bones, and so they are not truly lost. Nothing ever is, in the end.

Those who now call themselves Kaminoans came upon this planet and sunk great pillars down through the ocean and into the planet’s crust. Atop these pillars, so high above the ocean it cannot reach them, they built great facilities, and there they have remained for so long that they’ve forgotten they have ever come from anywhere else, although the ocean has not forgotten. It will never forget that the Kaminoans, with their long necks and their dark eyes incapable of seeing into the depths, are, strictly speaking, intruders.

The ocean, if we make the error of thinking it as human, perhaps resents these false Kaminoans for their presumption. But, remember, the ocean is not human and we must not mistake it as such.

I can tell what you’re thinking, that if the ocean truly did resent these false Kaminoans it had ways of ridding itself of them. After all, we have all seen the great maw of the ocean swallow towns and cities and coasts and islands. It could, if it so chose, drown them all and drag their great facilities to the deep where, eons from now, they would become nothing but more bones for life to sprout from.

But it does none of those things because it needs these false Kaminoans to bring forth the true people of this planet, the ones born for this ocean, the only ocean. And for that it will abide a great many insults that you or I would not.

It waits, as it has been waiting since the first drop of water formed on the first very first planet, and is rewarded when, as the rains come again, the first life of what will soon become dozens become hundreds become thousands become, impossibly, millions is birthed onto this world. If the false Kaminoans are as clever as they believe themselves to be then they would have noticed how the ocean everywhere, across every planet and moon and star system, went completely still as that first breath was taken and that first cry let loose.

And then the ocean is still no longer. It surges up along those pillars driven into its beds, cresting higher and higher until it spills across the platform only to climb higher yet again, searching. It is a joyful and triumphant wave that batters against the window of the room where the first life of Kamino is born.

This startles the false Kaminoans, who have never seen the ocean act in such a way. They will witness it once more, and only once more, and then never again. But the baby held by the medical droid stops crying. He looks to the window, to the wave and the water and the ocean, and he laughs.

Strange, the false Kaminoans think, the only thought they will spare of this day. Strange, yes, and wonderful.

The clones, and let us not pretend we do know who they are or how this story goes, live on these facilities high above the ocean. They are taught about war and obedience, and shown how to kill and not be killed. They are told about honor and how they, all of them, will die for it. And these boys, who have chips sown into their heads, learn that they are tools and will therefore find no greater pleasure than in fulfilling their intended use.

And the ocean, oh, we may yet witness it learning to hate like us.

The clones are tools, yes, but they are also boys, and so on those long, hot days when the waters are calm, and they almost always are calm, their minders take them down off that platform and into the ocean to swim. They are monitored in this as they are in all things, of who is faster and stronger, of those who are slower and who struggle and who require further consideration, and, yes, they are watched to make sure they do not drown. As if they can drown in their home. As if the ocean would ever allow such a terrible fate to befall them.

Look, how sweetly it sweeps them in its waves, gentle, so gentle, how it buoys them up and up, fondly twisting their hair out of their faces, how it soothes their fears and coaxes out smiles and laughter. Look, and tell me how this is different from how any parent would raise their child,

And perhaps, just this once, we can be forgiven for thinking of the ocean in human terms, for what else can we call this but love?

But for all that love, the relentless, crushing pressure of it, the ocean is as helpless as you and I, my dear. It can swallow islands whole, it can drag down cities and grow life out of the bones, but it cannot save those boys from that facility. It cannot give them a childhood were they are loved as people and not as tools to be wielded by the careless. It cannot build them a home to live and grow in. It can love them and nothing else.

The ocean knows this, and it pains it, as much as anything can. It remembers it must wait, and so it will. The ocean is good at waiting in the same way the stars and the dust and the vast empty blackness of space are good at waiting.

It waits for ten years. That’s not so long, is it? It is, all things being equal, not long at all.

Ah, but I can tell by your face that you think it terribly unfair, do you not? That the clones, these boys, have lost half their lives to a people who believe them to be tools, useful, yes, but to be discarded when that use runs out. You believe the ocean should have flooded those facilities and taken these boys it loves. But tell me, to what home will it take them and what food will it feed them? How would they live?

You see its dilemma now and now you know how helplessness feels. Sh, it’s all right. We must all learn these lessons, and we can only hope they are all this kind.

Now, chin up, and tell me do you remember how this story began?

That’s right. There was a beach and a boy. We have been away from that boy for too long. Let us return to him.

The boy is Obi, who is Obi-Wan, who is Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. He has finished his grieving, or at least believes he has, and he has been raising his apprentice to be, he hopes, a good man. The years have been kind to him, but not as kind as we might wish. His hair is more burnished red than copper but his skin is still that warm brown. He has forgotten his mother and his father and the ocean, but he has learned to dam his anger for when it will do the most good, and, sometimes if the sun is bright and hot and the day clear, he and his apprentice will take off their boots and roll up their pants legs and walk along the shoreline. He no longer laughs.

He is content if not happy, and he is tired, but not as tired as he will be, later.

Now he must send his apprentice away with the senator who his apprentice is in love with, or at least believes he is, for what do any of us know of love? Obi-Wan knows this is a mistake, but what choice does he have? She must be kept safe and he has been charged with finding a lost planet. He must trust in the lessons he’s imparted to his apprentice and in his apprentice’s good sense. It’s not much, it never is, but it’s all he has. It is all he’s ever had.

And so Obi-Wan goes to Kamino where it is raining. It’s always raining. Beneath the platform, slick with rain, the ocean surges. Its long wait has been rewarded and Obi, the boy it chose, has returned, and he will do what it cannot.

Obi-Wan speaks with the false Kaminoans. He sees the clones. He does not understand. He ignores the ocean. Not out of malice, he is not capable of that, not yet, but out of ignorance. He has forgotten.

As have you. Tell me, what did you expect, for him to storm the facilities and save those boys, who are now men? To love them as the ocean has loved them? To be better than he is?

Ah, yes, I see. You want a different story, an easier one. A happier one. But this is the one you chose. Oh, my dear, I did warn you, didn’t I? It’s not fair, but there is no stopping now. We must see it through to its very end.

But, perhaps, just this once, we can be kinder in the telling.

This time when Obi-Wan and Jango Fett clash, the rain has made the platform slick and untrustworthy. This time, instead of fleeing in his ship with his son while Obi-Wan gives chase, stubborn as he is, Jango Fett proves why he is the template for the men the ocean loves. He rams his shoulder into Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan’s feet can find no purchase and so slide uselessly under him. He is lifted up, up, up, until Jango Fett raises him above the railing and lets him fall.

And Obi-Wan, who once hung over a great pit while Qui-Gon lay dying, who reached out and heaved himself back onto solid ground to murder the man who murdered his master, does nothing. He lets himself fall into the white tipped waves. His robe is heavy. He sinks.

Obi-Wan, our Obi, is not a clone. He is not one of those boys the ocean loves, but the ocean chose him. It lets him struggle, his face upturned. It lets his eyes go wide in panic as the last bit of oxygen is punched from his lungs. It lets him remember. It lets him, open mouthed and choking, laugh.

And then, at the moment where he begins to breathe in the salt and the water, it sweeps him into its embrace and carries him to the surface. It deposits him gently, so gently, back onto the platform in front of several astonished false Kaminoans. It pats his back as he coughs up salt water and as he wipes the rain from his eyes. It smoothes his hair back from his face and sets his robes to right in the same way his parents—his parents! he remembers!—once did for him.

Obi-Wan tucks his hands into his sodden sleeves as the ocean, relentless, implacable, coils lovingly about his ankles.

“Hello there,” Obi-Wan says, as is his wont. “I remember now.”

“Remember what?” asks the director, the one who met with Sifo-Dyas and made the boys the ocean loves. She has one more part to play in all this, but not yet. Not yet.

Obi-Wan smiles and says, “Why it chose me.”

“Why did it choose you?” the false Kaminoans ask, but they know. Of course they do. They are still clever, if not as clever as they believe themselves to be.

“To do what it cannot,” Obi-Wan says.

And what he does is this: he walks into the facility and he gathers the Kaminoans, the true Kaminoans, and he brings them all out onto the platform and into the rain and to the ocean. And the ocean, oh the ocean, it winds among them, it holds them gently, you would not believe how gently, until their shock turns to wariness turns to smiles turns to laughter.

“Sir,” says a Kaminoan with a scar that curves around his eye, “why are you here?”

“I'm here for you,” Obi-Wan says. “I'm here to help you build a home.”

And the ocean rises up, up, up, and then further still until they all stand in the shadow of its great wave, and then it crashes down upon them, spills over them, steals them all away, leaving only the false Kaminoans behind in the rain, alone.

There is no stopping this kind of love. You either learn to swim its riptides or you drown. And it will never allow its children to drown.

I expect you still have questions. You want to know about those chips sown into the Kaminoans’ heads, waiting and biding their time much as the ocean did. You want to know about the apprentice and the senator and the love that drowned them. You want to know about the man who will do terrible things to become emperor, and who will then go on to do things, somehow, impossibly, even worse. Most of all you want to know what happens next.

But that is not this story, the one you chose with this kinder telling, the one we’ve reached the end of. It should be enough to know that for now, for this moment, they remember and they are safe and they are free.

And perhaps, just this once, my dear, they lived and they were happy.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [tumblr](http://dharmaavocado.tumblr.com/) and [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/Dharmaavocado).


End file.
